Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 747 ｜ No, “Whiteness” Isn’t to Blame for Tyre Nichols’ Murder

00:00:00.000 A black man in Memphis was beaten to death by five police officers and people, prominent 0.87

00:00:05.700 Christians included, are blaming whiteness. 0.97

00:00:09.240 Are they right?

00:00:10.740 Novak Djokovic won the Australian Open after being barred from the country for not getting

00:00:15.920 the vax last year.

00:00:17.200 We'll look at this epic moment as well as the performance of another athlete, a self-described

00:00:24.220 ice skating princess whose performance didn't go quite as well.

00:00:30.000 Then we'll look at that new statue in New York and contrast the demonic artwork of today

00:00:35.380 to the beautiful art of the past and talk about what this means.

00:00:38.300 This episode is brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers.

00:00:40.660 Go to GoodRanchers.com.

00:00:42.540 Use promo code ALI at checkout for a discount.

00:00:44.860 GoodRanchers.com, promo code ALI.

00:00:56.440 All right.

00:00:57.600 Happy Monday.

00:00:58.320 Hope everyone had a wonderful weekend.

00:01:01.220 All right.

00:01:01.780 We're going to start out this episode pretty intense because I've got a lot that I want

00:01:05.780 to talk about.

00:01:06.480 And then we're going to move into some lighter stuff.

00:01:09.180 Still very important.

00:01:11.420 So intense stuff first, a little bit lighter stuff, more fun stuff, ridiculous stuff, still

00:01:17.800 important stuff at the end.

00:01:21.000 All right.

00:01:21.760 Let's just go ahead and get right into this.

00:01:23.700 First, I want to talk about this horrible story in the news about a man named Tyree Nichols.

00:01:30.020 So on January 7th of this year, Nichols was beaten to death by five police officers in Memphis, Tennessee.

00:01:39.160 Nichols' interaction with the police that night, if you don't already know about this story, I'm going to give you some of this background,

00:01:45.240 started with an attempted traffic stop, allegedly for reckless driving.

00:01:50.660 The police chief has since said she doesn't actually know if this allegation is true, but that's what the police officers are saying, that he was recklessly driving.

00:01:59.300 So they pulled him over.

00:02:00.320 And when they pulled him over, Nichols ran from the police who pursued them and ultimately apprehended him.

00:02:06.860 Then, as we saw in gruesome body cam footage that was released on Friday night, the five officers that apprehended Nichols beat him to death,

00:02:18.760 literally just took turns beating him into a pulp.

00:02:22.020 He apparently calls out to his mother at one point in this incident, I could not stomach watching the whole thing.

00:02:30.180 I mean, I just, I can't imagine.

00:02:33.580 I cannot imagine like the fear and the pain of feeling that vulnerable, of looking around at those five faces as a human being and thinking,

00:02:43.040 I'm going to die and there's nothing that I can do about it.

00:02:46.860 I can't imagine also how callous you have to be to intentionally hurt someone and then to keep hurting them.

00:02:55.220 Like most of us, if we accidentally bump into someone in the hallway, we profusely apologize.

00:03:01.500 Like if you accidentally tripped someone, you're walking on the sidewalk and they fell, you would feel terrible.

00:03:06.940 You would do everything that you could to make sure that that person is okay, that stranger that you don't even know.

00:03:10.980 So what depth of heartlessness is required in a person to knowingly and purposely hurt a defenseless person to the point of death?

00:03:20.040 And I ask myself that question a lot when I see these stories of senseless violence.

00:03:25.140 Unfortunately, this kind of thing happens or not badge or happens a lot badge or not.

00:03:29.520 We all have the capacity for evil.

00:03:31.600 So I don't want it to seem like I'm being self-righteous and saying that I can't understand that level of cruelty.

00:03:37.120 But I can't.

00:03:38.120 I really can't.

00:03:39.360 I cannot understand how someone would go that far.

00:03:44.180 And I know there are some people who say that he shouldn't have run away.

00:03:49.020 But honestly, in this scenario, like I don't want to hear that.

00:03:52.940 I know that you never resist arrest.

00:03:55.340 That's true.

00:03:55.980 You shouldn't resist arrest.

00:03:57.100 You shouldn't run away.

00:03:58.220 But the officer's response in this case is not at all proportionate to Nichols running away.

00:04:04.540 This was an intentional, malicious, continual beating of an unarmed person, completely unnecessary.

00:04:12.860 And just by the way, Daniel Shaver, Justine Damon, Tony Tempa, you might not know their names and we'll talk about why in a second.

00:04:20.400 But none of them were resisting arrest.

00:04:22.700 And yet they were all murdered by the police.

00:04:24.600 So I don't think that just saying, hey, if you comply, everything is going to be fine is always true.

00:04:29.500 Now, it goes without saying, for any of you who have been listening to me for any amount of time, I am so thankful for good law enforcement and what they put on the line every day.

00:04:38.840 So thankful.

00:04:40.060 But we should always hold people who hold that much power to high standards of behavior, of integrity.

00:04:48.060 And that means that we do not unconditionally support the police as a whole, just as we don't unconditionally support any other profession as a whole.

00:04:57.220 We call out good and bad and we hold the bad to account.

00:05:00.880 Nichols actually survived this attack.

00:05:04.320 He was able to call an ambulance that transported him to the hospital.

00:05:09.340 He died of his injuries three days later.

00:05:12.660 So awful.

00:05:15.540 While Nichols was in critical condition at the hospital, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation was contacted to do a use of force investigation in this interaction with his police.

00:05:26.140 The officers involved were fired on January 20th.

00:05:29.940 They were charged with murder on January 27th.

00:05:33.800 And so the bad is being held to account in this case.

00:05:36.680 I'm thankful for that.

00:05:37.640 After the body cam footage was released on Friday, there were protests in Memphis and across the country.

00:05:44.900 People once again calling to defund the police, to abolish the police.

00:05:49.140 And then there's another response to all of this that maybe you expected.

00:05:53.800 The condemnation of white supremacy, the insistence that this is yet another consequence of the system of whiteness that has plagued our country for so long, that this is a result of racism.

00:06:09.200 You've probably been seeing that take circulating on Instagram and Twitter. 0.94

00:06:12.620 And this would be a more predictable response if the perpetrators in this crime were not black, but they are all five police officers in this awful, tragic incident are black. 0.91

00:06:28.360 But here's what Van Jones says at CNN headline. 0.94

00:06:32.720 The police who killed Tyree Nichols were black and they might still have been driven by racism. 0.97

00:06:38.360 Quote, society's message that black people are inferior, unworthy and dangerous is pervasive. 0.99

00:06:45.220 Is it? 0.97

00:06:47.000 OK, cops of all colors, including black police officers, internalize those messages and sometimes act on them. 0.98

00:06:53.700 In fact, in black neighborhoods, the phenomenon of brutal black cops singling out young black men for abuse is nothing new. 0.98

00:07:01.180 Huh? Interesting. 0.99

00:07:02.020 Black police officers abusing young black men in the community is nothing new, he says. 0.96

00:07:07.460 Now, that's a theme that I actually saw on Twitter over the weekend as I was looking at commentary on this from all different angles. 0.97

00:07:13.520 Black men on Twitter talking about their negative interactions with the police and how actually most of those interactions have been with black police officers, they're saying.

00:07:21.820 Now, these are just anecdotes, but it seems to be echoed by a lot of different kind of people in the media and just in the public.

00:07:28.080 That's interesting.

00:07:29.320 And yeah, we are still told this is a problem of racism by white people of white supremacy.

00:07:34.860 Activist Brie Newsome said this, quote, diversifying the police force doesn't end racism because racism is inherent to the organization of the institution and its daily operation.

00:07:47.060 Racism is what policing is, she says.

00:07:50.840 To which Atlantic writer Jamel Hill replied, I need so many people to understand this regarding Tyree Nichols.

00:07:57.780 Several of the officers who murdered Freddie Gray were black. 0.61

00:08:01.060 The entire system of policing is based on white supremacist violence, she says. 0.81

00:08:05.740 We see people under the boot of oppression carry its water all the time. 0.95

00:08:10.920 These are just a few of the many instances of left wing activists arguing on Twitter that five black men beating another black man to death is because of white people.

00:08:20.320 This message is also being circulated in the Christian world, namely by an organization called Be the Bridge, which claims to be on a mission to reconcile white and black believers.

00:08:32.980 But by my observation, simply adopts, for the most part, left wing, divisive, secular perspectives on race and simply repackages them for a Christian audience.

00:08:44.640 I've talked about the biblical issues with Be the Bridge in the past.

00:08:47.580 I'll link a blog post by Neil Shinvee, as well as an episode I did with the amazing Monique Dusan about this a while ago.

00:08:55.560 And Be the Bridge posted this.

00:08:57.520 I'll read you part of their caption and you can go read it for yourself.

00:09:02.620 So here's one thing that they say.

00:09:05.380 What about the race of the police officers?

00:09:08.480 They say no matter the DNA of those who killed Tyree, the system is the same.

00:09:12.880 The system was built on a structure, a foundation of whiteness. 0.98

00:09:16.860 Whiteness always harms. 1.00

00:09:18.900 When asked about police brutality, theologian William James Jennings says police brutality is an example of sinful disconnect.

00:09:25.080 The way whiteness has formed in some people has caused a deep disconnect from their environment and their world and from other people.

00:09:34.640 Then they end saying, finally, don't burden your black friends with questions and thoughts.

00:09:40.140 Mourn with the black community and remember who you are in their space.

00:09:43.680 It is not a moment to center your own thoughts, but bring more volume to our sisters and brothers who are numb, broken, mourning, crying out.

00:09:52.120 And yes, angry.

00:09:53.980 So this is a consequence of whiteness. 0.54

00:09:57.680 They say this is an organization that is touted by a lot of evangelical Christians, even those who consider themselves conservative evangelical Christians.

00:10:06.440 So consider that.

00:10:07.780 Now, they would argue that, quote unquote, whiteness doesn't necessarily mean white people, because why would why would anyone possibly think that?

00:10:16.900 But they they would say rather that it is whiteness is a system that privileges white people and oppresses black and brown people. 0.97

00:10:26.600 But like, let's not play dumb. 0.99

00:10:29.580 Let's not play dumb. 0.98

00:10:30.460 Even with that definition, the argument is that it was a system built by white people and is upheld today by white people, by white individuals. 0.93

00:10:39.780 And the allegedly unfair system in place is described by the color of people they claim constructed it.

00:10:47.000 So they don't just say the discriminatory system in which we live, which was set up by sinful people.

00:10:52.880 They call it whiteness because they hold to this erroneous, literally superstitious belief that virtually all bad things that have happened and continue to happen in the U.S., particularly to black and brown Americans, is because of white people and the system they've deliberately created to maintain power. 0.83

00:11:08.980 A white supremacist country where white Americans, Chinese Americans, Nigerian Americans, among others, are more financially successful than any other group in the country, a white supremacist country where white Americans are not supreme. 0.86

00:11:22.600 Incredible.

00:11:23.640 But we could spend an hour, have spent many hours debunking that claim.

00:11:27.640 For now, let's focus on the problem of this, the problem of blaming this horrible incident on whiteness, on white supremacy, on white people, whatever you want to call it.

00:11:40.660 First, let's just take a short look at the claim that policing in America is a tool of white oppression.

00:11:47.680 Therefore, anyone operating in it is a tool of white oppression, no matter what their color is. 0.65

00:11:53.220 I read an article on this yesterday to refresh myself on the historical reasons that some people make this claim.

00:12:01.540 And I think that there is some there is truth to there being a slave patrol at one point in the United States that used law enforcement as an excuse to re-enslave basically black people post-emancipation, brutal treatment, false accusations, disproportionate punishment for crimes. 0.78

00:12:21.660 Awful, the definition of injustice.

00:12:24.820 But the claim is that because that existed, mostly in the South, that that is the root of all law enforcement in America today, which is just not true.

00:12:36.220 And just because something started one way does not mean that it functions in the same way or serves the same purpose today.

00:12:43.560 But even if it did mean that, law enforcement in the U.S. wasn't all started as a slave patrol in all parts of the U.S.

00:12:51.000 And here's the most important part.

00:12:53.460 Law enforcement predates the United States, like it predates the West.

00:12:58.260 The first thing that came to mind when I was thinking about law enforcement was Romans 13.

00:13:03.280 Romans 13, 4, for he, the government, is God's servant for your good.

00:13:09.280 But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain, for he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer.

00:13:18.600 Now, obviously, we know that that does not mean that the government is always good or is always a tool of God's justice.

00:13:24.380 That's why in the U.S., we believe that there should be huge checks on government power, including police power, because we know the nature of power is that it corrupts those who have it.

00:13:35.440 But that does not mean that there is not a need for the government or not a need for law enforcement.

00:13:41.320 God's word clearly says that we do need the state.

00:13:44.120 We do need someone to exact punishment for crimes.

00:13:48.080 We need the state to enforce the law, to avenge God's wrath on the wrongdoer.

00:13:52.380 I reread that right in Romans 13, far before the United States and American slavery ever existed.

00:14:00.560 Does that mean that police should be beating defenseless people up?

00:14:03.860 Absolutely not.

00:14:05.140 But they are an arm of the state to ensure that people are held accountable for doing wrongs so that, according to the U.S. system, after a fair trial, that person bears punishment for their crime.

00:14:15.620 So we can acknowledge that at one point the United States had slave patrol and it was bad.

00:14:22.620 I am even open to the argument that in some places they routinely use disproportionate force that mirrors the practices in place then.

00:14:30.000 But to say that the entire policing system then is a system of evil whiteness, it's just bad logic.

00:14:36.820 Sadly, the police abuse power everywhere.

00:14:41.240 We need law enforcement.

00:14:42.700 It is absolutely necessary for safety.

00:14:45.100 I don't care what any left winger tries to tell me.

00:14:47.360 But when you put power, the power to abuse and to kill in the hands of the wrong people who are untrained or who lack honor, there is going to be injustice.

00:15:00.160 That is the sad truth of it.

00:15:01.580 In many places, much worse than what we see here.

00:15:04.540 In countries where people have never even seen a white person, police and militia oppress the populace.

00:15:09.760 Are they also somehow constructs of whiteness? 0.90

00:15:15.120 Now, there are many in this camp, believe it or not, who would honestly say yes to that question because they believe that all oppression, especially of black people, is a product of racism from white people. 1.00

00:15:26.300 But that argument, whether you're trying to argue it universally or just here in the U.S., especially by Christians, is as morally repugnant and biblically inaccurate as it is straight up stupid. 0.99

00:15:39.760 So the argument that black people do bad things and especially bad things to each other, where all the bad things that happen to black people are all because of white people's racism or a white system or whiteness is morally repugnant. 1.00

00:16:07.740 It's biblically inaccurate and it is also, yes, stupid. 1.00

00:16:13.540 Black people are humans, are they not? 1.00

00:16:16.600 They are image bearers of God.

00:16:18.760 They are people with souls created by God in need of redemption by Christ.

00:16:25.480 You believe that, right, Christian?

00:16:27.340 I do.

00:16:28.440 That means that they, just the same as me, have agency.

00:16:32.300 They have the ability to make good and bad decisions.

00:16:35.140 They have the capacity to discern right from wrong and then do it.

00:16:39.360 They, just like me, are dead in their sin apart from Christ.

00:16:43.280 When they get to the judgment throne, there will be no whiteness excuse for their sins.

00:16:48.060 No justification for unrighteousness that falls under the category of but-white supremacy.

00:16:53.900 There will be no consideration of melanin count or generational trauma in determining the fate of their soul.

00:16:59.280 It will only be whether they have been made clean by the blood of the Lamb, just like me, just like you.

00:17:05.780 So when we deny individuals accountability because they are black, when we won't hold them to the same standards and we use white people or the system as a scapegoat,

00:17:15.480 we actually deny their humanity, their God-given ability to choose, and we ultimately obscure their need for a savior and thereby pervert the gospel.

00:17:24.200 It's a big deal.

00:17:26.080 We also do something that God tells us repeatedly that he hates.

00:17:30.680 We show partiality.

00:17:32.500 This is something that we talked about a lot in 2020. 0.94

00:17:36.080 People who would excuse rioting and looting and arson because the perpetrators were black. 0.97

00:17:41.900 People who would only care about a story when the victim was black and the perpetrator was white. 0.97

00:17:46.440 People who, say, didn't have any public lament when Eliza Fletcher just a few months ago was kidnapped and murdered by a black man in Memphis.

00:17:55.840 One incident in a string of similar kidnappings there, but who called for a national reckoning in a case like this.

00:18:02.480 People who ignore the instances of similar black-on-black crime happening every single day at rates wildly disproportionate to their population size,

00:18:10.820 but speak up when a news story enables them to push their talking points.

00:18:15.560 People who don't even know, much less speak the names of Justine Damon, Tony Tempa, or Daniel Shaver

00:18:21.240 because they're white people murdered by the police as if God cares about their lives less.

00:18:26.520 Pastors and Christian influencers having two different messages for their audience based on their ethnicity. 0.98

00:18:31.760 Tough talk about the sin of racism to white folks and just apologies to black folks. 0.97

00:18:36.540 This is all partiality.

00:18:38.340 This is showing favoritism to one group over another for arbitrary reasons.

00:18:44.620 And God says it is the opposite of justice.

00:18:48.660 Leviticus 19.15

00:18:50.020 You shall do no injustice in court.

00:18:52.400 You shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great, but in righteousness shall you judge your neighbor.

00:18:59.940 Deuteronomy 16.19

00:19:01.220 You shall not pervert justice.

00:19:03.200 You shall not show partiality and you shall not accept a bribe.

00:19:06.620 And for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and subverts the cause of the righteous.

00:19:11.180 Second Chronicles 19.7

00:19:12.620 Now then, let the fear of the Lord be upon you.

00:19:15.400 Be careful what you do, for there is no injustice with the Lord our God or partiality or taking bribes.

00:19:21.820 First Peter 1.17

00:19:23.000 And if you call on him as father who judges impartially according to each one's deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile.

00:19:32.780 And then James 3.17

00:19:34.460 A little out of order.

00:19:36.280 But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere.

00:19:47.880 You see how much God cares about just the facts at hand when it comes to weighing a case of right and wrong?

00:19:57.460 Don't show favoritism to the poor or to the rich, he says, but judge people in righteousness.

00:20:03.540 Look at the truth, at the facts, not at their status.

00:20:07.480 God judges impartially according to our deeds, 1 Peter says.

00:20:11.720 God, godly wisdom is open to reason and impartial, James says, is not showing favoritism to one group because you think that their ancestors have been historically oppressed or because you believe that maybe they exist in some kind of unfair system because of their melanin count.

00:20:29.040 You don't show them favoritism or go softer on them when it comes to determining right or wrong.

00:20:34.760 That's not justice.

00:20:35.700 That's injustice.

00:20:36.600 We don't have time to get into it now, but you'll remember from 2020 how we talked about what I call God's four attributes of justice that we see over and over again throughout the Old Testament.

00:20:48.760 Truthful, proportional, direct, and impartial.

00:20:53.100 These are all characteristics that we see of God's law giving to ancient Israel that we would do well to apply to our understanding of justice today.

00:21:02.180 The exact opposite, actually, of social justice in many ways.

00:21:05.440 Thomas Chatterton Williams is a writer for The Atlantic.

00:21:09.920 He's very heterodox, I think, and his view is very interesting.

00:21:13.440 And he had a good response to the assertion that black police officers killed a black man because of white people's racism. 0.69

00:21:21.520 He said this.

00:21:22.800 He said, what if, stay with me, these five men were actually agents responsible for their own reprehensible actions and not merely hapless puppets being manipulated by the invisible hand of inescapable, 0.52

00:21:35.000 omnipotent, omnipotent, white supremacy?

00:21:36.400 I don't know if Williams is a Christian.

00:21:38.940 I don't think he means this to make a theological point, but it does.

00:21:42.080 This, again, superstitious assertion that there is essentially a ghost of white supremacy always lurking around and spooking black people into being mean to other black people robs these men, robs people of their agency.

00:21:58.660 You can say whatever you want about policing in America and there are things to be said, but these men could have made another choice and they didn't.

00:22:08.600 That's what the law must hold them accountable for.

00:22:10.820 That is what God will hold them accountable for.

00:22:13.080 And there will be people who hear this and say, oh, why are you being divisive?

00:22:22.560 Why can't you just have empathy here?

00:22:26.620 Me have empathy.

00:22:28.580 You, who made this about whiteness, you decided to make a man's brutal death about your bogus racial narrative instead of addressing the actual situation and proposing real solutions.

00:22:42.800 You used this man's death to push your agenda.

00:22:46.400 You fit his murder into your preconceived narrative, fit him into your politics, placed him as a bow in your quiver for the culture war when you made this about whiteness.

00:22:57.180 You couldn't resist.

00:22:59.260 Instead of looking at the situation as it is, you said, yeah, but how can I make this about white supremacy even when a white person was nowhere to be found?

00:23:07.280 And you want to lecture anyone else about empathy and division?

00:23:11.580 No.

00:23:13.060 No.

00:23:14.260 I'm tired of you sowing discord in the body through your worldly ideologies and then accusing anyone who calls you out on it an enemy of unity.

00:23:23.260 No.

00:23:24.820 No.

00:23:25.300 No.

00:23:27.980 So how did this happen?

00:23:30.620 We don't buy the lie that whiteness made them do it.

00:23:34.220 So for those of us living in reality, actually more interested in protecting lives than pushing some kind of crazy academic narrative that helps no one, let us actually address this question.

00:23:47.900 Well, there are multiple reports now saying these men were hired after Memphis PD relaxed job requirements for the sake of diversity.

00:23:58.540 This is New York Post reporting.

00:24:00.220 Tadarius Bean and Demetrius Haley both joined the Memphis Police Department in August 2020.

00:24:06.460 NBC News reported more than two years after the department dramatically loosened the education qualifications to become an officer.

00:24:14.860 Recruits no longer needed an associate's degree or 54 college credit hours to join the force and could get by with five years of work experience, Action 5 reported.

00:24:23.980 The department showed signs of struggle with recruiting new police officers offering $15,000 signing bonuses in 2021 and 2022.

00:24:32.660 Fox 13 reported last year, the department lowered its standards again for new recruits nixing the timed physical ability test in cutting college education requirements from 54 credit hours to just 24.

00:24:46.100 The department also revealed that it was even offering waivers for people who have been convicted on felony charges.

00:24:58.800 Yikes.

00:25:00.600 Now, to be honest, I feel for the department.

00:25:03.620 I'm sure it is tough to get officers right now.

00:25:05.920 I mean, what person who is well qualified also for a non-police job would want to enter the force right now?

00:25:13.980 I know that there are plenty out there, plenty of you listening and your husbands, and I thank God for that.

00:25:19.620 But there are a ton of would-be great, honorable, effective police officers who look at the scrutiny even good officers face and say, no, it's not worth it.

00:25:28.560 That, on top of putting your life on the line every day, no thanks.

00:25:33.040 So a lot of departments have to lower their standards.

00:25:36.260 In the case of Memphis, it wasn't just to get new recruits.

00:25:40.900 It was reportedly to get Black recruits because we constantly hear this, representation matters.

00:25:46.420 That's what DEI training constantly tells us.

00:25:49.780 So they have a Black female police chief. 1.00

00:25:53.400 We have a bunch of Black officers. 0.96

00:25:55.240 Most of the city council in Memphis is Black. 0.73

00:25:57.880 And the theory has always been, well, that's going to alleviate tensions, put more Black people in power, fill the police force with diversity that's going to relieve the oppression of Black people. 0.60

00:26:10.580 But as we pointed out earlier, Black officers inflicting violence on Black people happens, apparently isn't all that rare.

00:26:18.100 So Memphis really got nothing good out of that deal. 0.94

00:26:22.100 And this has been going on for a while.

00:26:24.240 I received a message from a follower who said that they went through training with the Memphis Police Department in 2010.

00:26:32.120 So 13 years ago, he said that even then, they weren't giving them adequate training, that they gave them like a couple jujitsu lessons and told them, well, that's about it.

00:26:42.100 You're going to have to get more training beyond this.

00:26:44.600 Didn't train them on how to deal with unruly suspects.

00:26:47.060 Nothing like that.

00:26:48.280 Just said, here's your gun.

00:26:49.520 Here's your baton.

00:26:50.800 Go out there.

00:26:51.480 Now, apparently, police officers don't even have to pass any fitness standards.

00:26:57.600 And women are being recruited for the same positions that men are in the name of inclusion and equity, I'm sure, but also probably in the name of desperation. 1.00

00:27:05.180 And if there's any city in the country, maybe more than Chicago or L.A. or New York or Philly even, that needs actual good policing, it is Memphis, Tennessee.

00:27:14.220 Parts of Memphis have been dangerous for a very long time, but the pockets of safety there are getting smaller and smaller.

00:27:21.540 And 2020 showed us what demonizing and defunding the police departments did.

00:27:25.880 Minneapolis, Seattle, Portland, New York, Austin, etc.

00:27:28.440 All of these blue cities, crime, violence, murder, all went up.

00:27:32.260 How'd those BLM and TIFA autonomous zones work out?

00:27:35.360 Oh, yeah, they ended in murder of a 16-year-old.

00:27:39.800 Remember that?

00:27:40.740 How did the riots work out?

00:27:42.760 Oh, yeah, and the deaths of innocent people, including an eight-year-old little girl in Atlanta named Sequoia Turner that was shot by a writer in the parking lot of a Wendy's.

00:27:52.820 It ended in the destruction of poor, mostly black communities.

00:27:56.000 How did BLM end up working out for the communities they said that they were fighting for?

00:27:59.680 Oh, yeah, and funneling millions of dollars to the founders and doing nothing for people.

00:28:06.040 This is what happens when you blame everything on whiteness and on the system, rather than looking at each evil situation as it comes and trying to figure out what were the real motivations?

00:28:19.420 What were the real factors that went into this?

00:28:21.740 What changes can we make to stop that from happening?

00:28:24.280 It's real convenient to always say that everything is the problem of whiteness because there's never any real solution for it except that you need to keep on reading that person's books, keep on hiring that person to speak, keep on doing that person's program, just keep doing the work and paying the money and spending the time. 0.99

00:28:45.020 There's never any concrete, immediate steps to be taken because it's not about change.

00:28:53.160 It's not about saving lives.

00:28:54.900 It is about political activism and power.

00:28:59.840 The reality is that we need to fund, rigorously train and weed out the police, drop the DEI training everywhere, but especially police departments, drop the representation quotas, quit the criminal justice quotas,

00:29:15.020 crap where the law favors criminals over victims, we need to end police unions, controversial, because we need to end public unions, because public unions are unethical, as I've talked about many times, especially teachers unions, and they just seem to breed corruption.

00:29:32.380 I do think that there is a lot of corruption in our, there could be a lot of corruption in our police system in different ways across the country, not because of white supremacy, but because you'd be hard pressed to find any government agency that's not corrupt. 0.97

00:29:46.520 Add to that the level of power, lethal power that the police has, and they're untrained, and they're, I mean, it's just a recipe for disaster.

00:29:55.480 It's actually a wonder that this kind of thing doesn't happen more often than it does, and it probably does.

00:29:59.680 It just doesn't always get publicized because it's not the right racial makeup for most people in the media to care.

00:30:05.660 The police need to be held to extremely high standards while at the same time not being constantly lambasted so that the good officers can do their job.

00:30:15.160 These men, in this case, are being tried for murder good.

00:30:20.100 Good.

00:30:20.840 They should get life in prison.

00:30:22.180 If it were up to me, if found guilty of premeditated intentional murder, because there are actually some, like, conversations going on within Memphis right now that this was actually, like, a personal vendetta between one of the officers and this guy.

00:30:38.120 Like, if this was a premeditated thing that makes it even worse, they should get the death penalty.

00:30:43.480 That's what I would say. 0.67

00:30:45.440 If this was premeditated malicious attack, you know, intentional murder, then this should get the death penalty.

00:30:52.380 Absolutely.

00:30:53.060 You want to start reform.

00:30:55.660 You want to send a signal. 0.96

00:30:57.640 Well, if you're going to intentionally murder a defenseless human being, then I don't see why you shouldn't get the death penalty.

00:31:05.480 As for Tyree Nichols, I mourn for him.

00:31:08.940 I think about how much he suffered in those moments, how much he suffered for those three days in the hospital when the doctors couldn't save him.

00:31:14.860 I mourn for his family, his mom, who has to think for the rest of her life about the pain and the fear that he went through.

00:31:23.180 That's the worst, worst, worst, worst thing that could happen to you as a mother.

00:31:28.060 His family will be haunted by this long past this new cycle, so we need to think of them and pray for them as well past the politics and the arguments about it all.

00:31:38.760 But we also need to make sure that we as Christians are thinking about these situations in a clear-headed biblical way.

00:31:46.080 All right.

00:31:47.380 Deep breath.

00:31:48.340 I told you it was going to be intense at the start.

00:31:50.180 Let's move on.

00:31:50.800 All right.

00:32:02.460 So let's look at two tales.

00:32:04.840 Two tales.

00:32:06.300 One of success and one of failure.

00:32:09.700 One of rewarding competence and excellence and hard work.

00:32:14.660 And one rewarding identity on no merit basis whatsoever.

00:32:23.240 So let's start with it.

00:32:24.400 Let's start with the good story.

00:32:25.600 The good story comes out of Australia.

00:32:28.600 Novak Djokovic.

00:32:30.000 He is possibly the greatest tennis player of all time.

00:32:35.400 He won the Australian Open.

00:32:38.280 And the reason why this is such a big deal is because he was barred from playing in the Australian Open last year

00:32:44.220 because he refused to get the vaccine.

00:32:46.140 I mean, he held strong on this in Australia because they're just crazy.

00:32:51.060 Decided, no, you can't come in.

00:32:53.260 You can't compete.

00:32:54.860 Here's a clip of Djokovic explaining why he doesn't want to get the vaccine.

00:33:00.840 Are you prepared to forego the chance to be the greatest player that ever picked up a racket, statistically?

00:33:10.260 Because you feel so strongly about this jab.

00:33:13.500 Yes.

00:33:14.220 I do.

00:33:17.620 Why, Novak?

00:33:18.800 Why?

00:33:19.620 Why do you?

00:33:20.020 Because the principles of decision-making on my body are more important than any title or anything else.

00:33:30.280 I'm trying to be in tune with my body as much as I possibly can.

00:33:37.060 Wow.

00:33:37.680 So he was willing to forego his title.

00:33:39.960 He would have won the Australian Open last year.

00:33:42.160 He actually was barred from the country until 2025, but then that decision was reversed last year.

00:33:48.840 And so this year he came back and won.

00:33:50.900 Like, what an amazing comeback story.

00:33:54.580 And good for him for standing on his principles.

00:33:56.760 Do you know how few people in the entire world would do that?

00:34:01.560 So few, so few, so few.

00:34:05.360 So here he is winning the Australian Open after being told last year, sorry, you can't play because you won't take this jab that you don't need.

00:34:15.020 Here he is.

00:34:15.440 I just have a huge smile on my face.

00:34:44.220 Because, wow, that is so amazing.

00:34:46.440 It couldn't have been a better ending to this story.

00:34:49.300 And he's also been very outspoken about his Orthodox Christian faith.

00:34:52.440 He said before, I'm an athlete, I'm an Orthodox Christian.

00:34:54.740 So I'm sure that his decision and his security and his decision also probably came from his faith as well.

00:35:00.660 So that's just amazing.

00:35:02.580 I mean, honestly, praise God for that.

00:35:04.700 And then these pictures were circulating on Twitter, which I just got a good chuckle out of.

00:35:10.380 And it's Bill Gates, who was at the Australian Open, watching Djokovic win.

00:35:18.840 And obviously, we know that Bill Gates, big supporter, developer of these vaccines.

00:35:25.660 And he's just, if you're listening to this, he's just sitting there, like, not cheering and kind of with his mouth set, like, upset about it.

00:35:37.460 Now, to be fair, I don't know if they, if, like, this really captured the moment.

00:35:44.160 Like, his expression, I don't really know if they captured Bill Gates' expression at the moment that Djokovic won.

00:35:51.380 These are just, like, pictures that they paired together, probably just to make a point.

00:35:56.440 But pretty funny, like, the irony there.

00:35:59.640 Also, like, the picture of health in Djokovic, someone who didn't get the vaccine yet is completely and totally healthy, would probably fare better with COVID than someone like Bill Gates, who was looking more and more like the Michelin man.

00:36:11.360 Come on now.

00:36:11.980 All right, so that story of success, incompetence, and excellence, and working hard, things that are often, I think, demonized increasingly in our culture.

00:36:23.140 And then we move over to Finland.

00:36:27.040 Finland.

00:36:27.840 This is from Redux.

00:36:29.620 The headline says,

00:36:30.240 A 59-year-old farmer from Finland who uses the name Minna Maria, Minna Maria Antike Kanin, sorry, don't know how to pronounce that, performed at the opening ceremony of the European Figure Skating Championships in Espoo this week.

00:36:47.560 He said it was to fulfill a childhood dream of being an ice princess.

00:36:52.700 We'll put up this one picture of him.

00:36:57.440 Of course, he goes by she, her showing off his skates.

00:37:01.300 I mean, that's just a dainty ice princess, if you've ever seen one.

00:37:08.500 So, uh, this is at the, uh, 2023 European Championships.

00:37:13.380 For some reason, they had this person, this man who pretends to not just be a woman, but pretends to be a girl, like a princess.

00:37:22.220 Yes, that's a theme, keep that in mind, as we've talked about many times, decided to have him skate, I guess, in the opening ceremony in front of everyone.

00:37:35.120 And honestly, no one, no one can figure out why.

00:37:40.420 Just watch.

00:37:41.580 Should we feel bad for laughing?

00:37:58.940 I don't think that we should.

00:38:00.400 I mean, if this were just, like, an old man or an old woman or a special needs person going out there and they were just trying to, you know, help them fulfill their dreams and that person fell, I think that would be really sad.

00:38:14.440 But why does this person have special status?

00:38:16.840 Because he's a man who likes to wear makeup and call himself an ice princess and wear a skirt.

00:38:23.200 Like, it's kind of opening my eyes to why some people, like, treat this group the way that they do.

00:38:28.600 Do you see them as having special needs or something?

00:38:31.780 Like, is that why you elevate them to this point?

00:38:34.000 Like, would you ever put any other kind of person out on the rink like that who clearly cannot skate?

00:38:40.180 Like, if you were just listening to this, he literally just, like, fell and sat on his knees and just, like, sat there until an actual skater had to come up there with the Finnish flag and, like, help him up.

00:38:53.960 I mean, I do feel sad for this person.

00:38:56.240 I do.

00:38:56.580 But also, dude, like, you took someone else's spot.

00:39:01.040 They could have had a competent skater who had been, you know, working on skating for the past 20 years of their life go up there.

00:39:10.120 And they didn't.

00:39:10.900 They chose someone who decided to transition recently, transition, quote unquote, and who decided to take up skating recently to go out there and embarrass himself and embarrass his country.

00:39:24.420 What is wrong with you, what is wrong with you people?

00:39:28.880 But this is not his first stellar performance.

00:39:33.000 Here he is.

00:39:34.920 Which is, it'll just take your breath away.

00:39:37.380 Performing as a geisha.

00:39:38.800 It's like a toddler.

00:39:51.600 It is.

00:39:52.180 Like, I think that if I practiced for, like, a week, I could probably do that.

00:39:58.360 I could probably.

00:39:59.080 Not that I think that I would be a great ice skater, but I would be on the same level.

00:40:04.000 So we've got, like, appropriation of gender.

00:40:06.220 We've got appropriation of age.

00:40:07.940 We've got appropriation of Japanese culture here.

00:40:11.540 We've got a lot of appropriation.

00:40:13.180 But it's fine.

00:40:14.300 Because somehow you become part of the oppressed class if you are a white man who decides that he's a little girl. 0.98

00:40:22.760 You're just acting out your fetish. 0.95

00:40:24.100 He's acting out his fetish.

00:40:26.000 And we are all just affirming it and applauding it and giving him special treatment because of it. 0.99

00:40:32.360 It's disgusting. 0.98

00:40:34.560 Ugh. 0.96

00:40:35.300 The godlessness.

00:40:36.740 All right.

00:40:37.620 I got one more thing I wanted to talk about.

00:40:39.480 And it's also comparing beauty and good things and excellence to the deterioration that always comes from progressivism.

00:40:53.000 Always.

00:40:54.100 All right.

00:41:05.020 So a lot of you have been asking me about this new statue that was placed on a New York, an appellate courthouse statue.

00:41:16.080 Apparently, the statue is supposed to be an ode to Ruth Bader Ginsburg and is a statement on abortion rights.

00:41:27.240 So if you're watching this, you see this gold statue.

00:41:30.560 And the first thing that comes to mind is that it's demonic.

00:41:33.600 If you've seen other kinds of like demonic depictions, it's kind of this hybrid typically between like a human and a ram or some other kind of animal.

00:41:45.200 And that's what's going on here.

00:41:46.400 She looks like she's got ram's horns. 1.00

00:41:48.040 She doesn't have arms.

00:41:49.340 She has what looks like snakes instead. 0.99

00:41:52.180 It absolutely looks like a golden idol.

00:41:54.780 But it also looks like it looks like a satanic symbol.

00:42:00.340 And that is very fitting.

00:42:02.240 If you're going to make an ode to so-called abortion rights and an ode to killing unborn children, then, of course, you're going to make it look demonic.

00:42:13.740 The artist, Pakistani-American Shazia Sikander, said the sculpture was part of an urgent and necessary cultural reckoning underway as New York, along with cities across the world, and reconsiders traditional representations of power in public spaces and recasts civic structures to better reflect 21st century mores.

00:42:35.700 Yeah, it does definitely reflect more of our cultural values today.

00:42:41.260 And that is idolatry.

00:42:42.760 And that is the worship of Satan and submission to evil and the love of child sacrifice.

00:42:53.000 And so this is absolutely an appropriate representation of, I think, certainly where New York has gone, but where many people in the United States have gone.

00:43:02.220 Now, if you look at other statues that are on this particular courthouse, this beautiful statue, it's supposed to be a statue of truth,

00:43:11.840 a statue that represents impartiality of wisdom.

00:43:19.480 You can see that they've got their books there and all of the symbolism.

00:43:23.000 I mean, that is what art used to be, just a representation of virtue, of actual beauty.

00:43:30.440 This is what an actual human being looks like.

00:43:32.460 This is what a formidable woman looks like. 1.00

00:43:36.220 Supposed to represent values that we would like to uphold, like honor, not satanic values, like murder.

00:43:43.820 And then we also see here, we see this other statue, which is supposed to be a depiction of wisdom.

00:43:52.840 As you can see, he is consulting what I supposed to be the scriptures, or at least the wisdom of old.

00:44:06.640 You can see wisdom inscribed at the front of the statue.

00:44:12.340 This person is supposed to be depicting the care and the caution that goes into making judicial decisions.

00:44:21.080 And then you also have a statue that represents force.

00:44:24.080 I would guess this means law enforcement.

00:44:25.780 He looks like a Roman centurion.

00:44:27.220 Again, these are just beautiful statues, very realistic, and show the different parts of the justice system.

00:44:36.280 So we've got truth, we've got wisdom, we've got force all represented.

00:44:39.320 And now it's been replaced by a golden statue that is supposed to represent murder.

00:44:46.520 And this is not the only new artwork that progressives have put up over the past couple weeks.

00:44:55.520 We've also got this new monument in, let's see, in Boston to Martin Luther King Jr.

00:45:05.420 And we'll pull that up.

00:45:08.060 If you haven't seen it, you've probably seen it.

00:45:09.740 A lot of people are saying that it looks weird.

00:45:13.820 I will not say this is a family-friendly show.

00:45:17.680 I will not say what people are saying that it looks like.

00:45:20.300 I will say that it looks inappropriate.

00:45:23.760 But I could also just say that it looks ugly.

00:45:26.140 Like it's very confusing as to what it is actually supposed to be.

00:45:29.680 It's supposed to be an embrace, apparently.

00:45:31.920 It was unveiled Friday, January 13th.

00:45:35.080 Interesting.

00:45:36.500 But it's just ugly.

00:45:38.200 It's just ugly.

00:45:39.420 And that is what art seems to be today.

00:45:42.300 And actually, like the MLK Memorial in D.C., it looks better.

00:45:47.780 But I don't like the MLK Memorial in D.C. either.

00:45:50.720 Like I also think that that's kind of ugly.

00:45:53.220 I think it's supposed to be like unfinished because his work is unfinished.

00:45:56.440 But I think he looks like very stern and not very inspiring.

00:46:00.700 And I actually don't think that artwork is great either.

00:46:02.940 But I think it's better than what was just put up in Boston.

00:46:09.560 And this is just a theme that we see.

00:46:11.960 A theme that we see is that the left pushes the austere.

00:46:16.280 They push the disturbing.

00:46:18.420 They push the dark.

00:46:19.520 They replace beauty and goodness and light and grace and wisdom with its opposites continually.

00:46:28.080 And then they get mad when you don't clap.

00:46:30.840 They're in the business of perversion and the business of depravity.

00:46:34.920 And like if you see people who go from being like they're like, hey, yeah, I was a Christian and I was like you see these tick tocks all the time. 0.86

00:46:45.240 There's like, yeah, I, you know, I was a Christian, but secretly I was suppressing my sexuality or I was suppressing my activism.

00:46:51.720 And then you see what they look like after they become the secular progressives.

00:46:55.220 It's always toward ugly. 0.80

00:46:56.520 Now, I'm not saying that I'm not saying that they are actually like innately ugly, like their faces are ugly, but they have chosen to take on ugly characteristics.

00:47:10.280 That's always what happens.

00:47:11.820 You never see a glow up of someone going from being like in a stable state, in a stable position, like Christian, conservative, whatever, to being progressive and looking better.

00:47:24.100 They just always look like they've been destroyed or in disarray.

00:47:27.800 There was this also this Burberry ad going around and it is it's two people.

00:47:39.980 I don't know what they are.

00:47:43.600 One of them obviously has scars on her chest because she got a mastectomy and now she wants to look like a man. 1.00

00:47:49.760 Then the other person, I think it's supposed to always also look androgynous.

00:47:55.200 And this is apparently what Burberry is putting on their Instagram in order to sell their clothes. 0.80

00:48:01.380 I'm not saying that these two people, again, are innately ugly.

00:48:04.760 Like I'm not saying that their faces are ugly or anything like that. 0.71

00:48:07.500 But what is being represented here is ugliness. 0.98

00:48:10.540 It is supposed to be ugly.

00:48:12.100 The scars, the eyebrows, the haircuts, the tattoos, the look of it.

00:48:17.740 It is supposed to be shocking.

00:48:19.220 It's not supposed to be beautiful.

00:48:21.480 And by the way, there's no like free market explanation for this.

00:48:25.080 Like no one is buying more Burberry clothes because they're putting these kinds of images on their Instagram.

00:48:30.680 They're making some kind of statement.

00:48:32.560 That's what progressivism does.

00:48:33.580 It makes a statement with the grotesque.

00:48:36.180 If you look at some previous Burberry ads, we'll pull some up.

00:48:40.080 Like from even from 2014, normal, beautiful people.

00:48:44.900 You've got this all the way back to 1951.

00:48:49.220 I mean, see how far we've fallen.

00:48:51.260 I don't know if we can put these upside by side.

00:48:53.460 But look at this.

00:48:54.380 1951.

00:48:54.960 This is a Burberry ad.

00:48:56.320 Okay.

00:48:56.900 Two beautiful women, classy women and their classy clothes and the classy designs. 1.00

00:49:03.460 And then go back to the one, the Instagram one that we have now of the two.

00:49:07.320 Like how far have we fallen?

00:49:11.560 That doesn't just happen, by the way.

00:49:13.840 That is a choice.

00:49:15.060 That is replacing a good value system with a bad value system.

00:49:18.760 That's what happens.

00:49:19.940 You get destruction and you get ugliness.

00:49:22.080 We've got a Kate Moss ad from Burberry 2005.

00:49:26.040 Also gorgeous, beautiful.

00:49:28.920 The same thing has happened to other companies like Calvin Klein.

00:49:32.960 They used to show beauty and fitness and things like that.

00:49:38.060 And now they don't.

00:49:38.900 They show things that are objectively unhealthy, objectively confusing.

00:49:45.260 And it's all because we have exchanged the truth of God for a lie, even down to our very

00:49:50.980 nature as human beings.

00:49:53.180 And so just as Satan hates beauty and hates truth and hates love and hates goodness and

00:50:01.600 hates light, so those that follow him are going to distort and dismantle these things as well.

00:50:08.660 And so we can be champions of beauty and of clarity and of truth to fight against this

00:50:14.580 just ugliness that really comes from the soul.

00:50:18.360 It might seem like it doesn't matter, but I really think it does speak to where we are

00:50:21.580 as a culture.

00:50:23.180 All right.

00:50:34.120 Another long one today.

00:50:35.280 I had a lot to talk about, though.

00:50:36.700 I had a lot to talk about.

00:50:38.060 And there were even things that I didn't even get to today.

00:50:40.140 We've got a lot of good stuff coming down the pipeline this week.

00:50:42.780 You guys absolutely are loving that Ginger Duggar Volo episode that we did.

00:50:48.080 Go back.

00:50:48.860 Listen to that on.

00:50:50.800 Was that Thursday?

00:50:51.540 No, that was Wednesday.

00:50:52.440 Watch it on YouTube.

00:50:54.520 Listen wherever you get your podcasts and share it, too, because I think it's helping

00:50:59.360 a lot of people just how open she was about her testimony.

00:51:02.760 And so I'm so thankful for you guys listening to that and watching that.

00:51:05.600 And if you're new here because of that episode, welcome.

00:51:08.700 As you can tell, we talk about a lot of things.

00:51:10.440 Not all episodes are this long, though.

00:51:12.080 Try to keep it to 45 minutes.

00:51:13.580 But man, on Monday, it's hard because so much happens.

00:51:16.700 All right.

00:51:17.360 That's all we got time for today.

00:51:18.460 We will be back here tomorrow.

00:51:19.880 See you guys then.

00:51:20.440 Thank you.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - January 30, 2023

Ep 747 ｜ No, “Whiteness” Isn’t to Blame for Tyre Nichols’ Murder

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